‘Is New Hampshire still a purple state?’ In this presidential election, changing demographics matter.

In recent decades, newcomers to New Hampshire have brought their political identity with them. That will shape the outcome of this presidential election.

Frank Hobbs, 56; John Cairn, 64; and Val Touba, 69, waved flags and held signs recently alongside a busy intersection on New Hampshire Route 114. Steven Porter/Globe Staff

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — Retired electrical engineer Val Touba stood at a busy intersection late one recent Friday afternoon, as passing motorists honked and revved their engines.

Some greeted him warmly when they saw he was holding campaign signs in support of Donald J. Trump. Others waved with a single finger.

Touba, 69, has lived in Bedford, N.H., since 1996, so he has seen his town and those around it grow rapidly and evolve politically over the past three decades.

“All of southern New Hampshire has gone from red to purple and light blue now. ... I would love to see it go back to red,” he said.

Touba, a registered Republican, said the demographic trend is largely attributable to people moving into the area from Massachusetts. There is some evidence of that. Research shows the largest number of people moving to New Hampshire are coming from the Bay State, and newcomers overall lean slightly Democratic.

But there are also other factors to consider ahead of the Nov. 5 election: Young voters who will be voting for the first time lean further to the left, economic trends impact different New Hampshire communities differently, and Trump is a particularly divisive political figure, even among members of his own party.

Touba said he is “cautiously optimistic” about Trump’s odds of success nationwide, but he’s more measured about the former president’s chances of winning New Hampshire, which he believes is a tossup.

Those 50-50 odds might have been true when Trump was facing President Biden. Polls showed Biden and Trump in a tight contest in New Hampshire. But since Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in to lead the Democratic ticket, polls have shown her with a clear advantage over Trump in New Hampshire, even as their showdown remains highly competitive in all seven swing states.

A couple of the latest polls suggest the race has tightened in New Hampshire, but Andrew E. Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, said Monday those polls relied on “unusual” methodologies. All things considered, Smith said, it still seems unlikely that Trump will pull ahead in the state, especially since his campaign hasn’t been focusing its efforts here.

“There’s enough other closer states that they have to win before they start worrying about a state like New Hampshire,” he said.

Harris campaigned in New Hampshire in September, and Trump said he would visit again before the election, but he hasn’t set foot in the state since the presidential primary in January.

Lou Gargiulo, a Trump campaign co-chair in New Hampshire, said many pro-Trump efforts in the state are organic and grassroots, such as “flag waves,” where people gather on a roadside to show their support locally.

Harris’s campaign, meanwhile, said it has 120 staff members and 17 field offices across New Hampshire.

“We are very solidly in Kamala territory in New Hampshire at this point,” said Anna Brown, executive director of Citizens Count, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks the state Legislature.

Brown said that has as much to do with the candidates as it does the state’s apparent lean to the left.

“Is New Hampshire still a purple state? It is if Republicans run more moderate candidates,” said Brown.

Brown pointed to the state’s competitive gubernatorial race, in which former US senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, is competing with former Manchester mayor Joyce Craig, a Democrat, to see who will succeed Republican incumbent Governor Chris Sununu. Ayotte has promised not to further restrict access to abortion, to keep taxes low, and to promote business-friendly policies and limit state regulation.

Ayotte “totally has a chance,” Brown said.

“But I would not call Donald Trump a purple candidate,” she added.

While New Hampshire has had a Republican governor and GOP control in both the state House and state Senate for the past four years, a Republican presidential candidate hasn’t won the state since George W. Bush in 2000.

Former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally at the SNHU Arena in Manchester, N.H., on Jan. 20.DOUG MILLS/NYT

There were more registered Republicans (308,223) than registered Democrats (268,943) in New Hampshire as of September, but the 318,221 undeclared voters — who make up the state’s largest voting bloc — include more people aligned with Democrats than Republicans, which gives Harris an edge, Smith said.

Some New Hampshire Republicans are balking at the prospect of another Trump term.

Disapproval of Trump led James Steiner, a registered Republican, to throw his support behind Harris. Steiner voted for Nikki Haley in the primary, hoping the former South Carolina governor could steer the national Republican Party in a different direction. In August, those hopes dashed, Steiner became co-chair of Republicans for Harris.

“In my opinion of Donald Trump and his actions, there’s only one candidate in this race who shares the values of rule of law, values the Constitution, and will protect democracy, and that is Kamala Harris,” he said.

Steiner, 68, said he was raised in a Republican household and he’s aligned with the party values of low taxes and small government. That’s never kept him from crossing party lines. He’s shot commercials for Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen and is backing the Democratic candidate in the 2nd Congressional District, Maggie Goodlander.

“When the Republican Party puts up qualified candidates, I’m happy to support them,” he said. “Give me a Ronald Reagan, give me a John McCain, give me a Mitt Romney.”

About a hundred years ago, New England was the most Republican part of the country, but that began changing after World War II as people moved and took their political affiliation with them, according to Smith. New Hampshire was the last New England state to start becoming more blue, in the 1990s.

Now, New Hampshire favors Democratic presidential candidates by about 4 or 5 percentage points, making it hard for a Republican to win, said Smith.

“The reason Harris has gone up here is that she’s simply not Joe Biden,” he said.

Political shifts have not played out uniformly across the state.

Economically prosperous communities that were once Republican strongholds, such as Bedford, are becoming more blue, while some smaller rural towns in New Hampshire have become a deeper red.

Spencer Fortier said he’s seen that change in his hometown of Berlin, the state’s northernmost city, which was once solidly blue but where Republicans have recently gained more traction. In 2023, residents rejected Democratic-aligned Mayor Paul Grenier, who had served as mayor for 14 years, and elected Republican-aligned newcomer Robert R. Cone.

Fortier, a 23-year-old Republican, said he suspects there’s enough support that Trump, his preferred candidate, could win Coos County, although he doubts the former president could win New Hampshire.

“My grandmother was a lifelong Democrat until a few years ago,” said Fortier, who was raised by his grandparents. He said the Democratic Party has struggled to represent working people. “They’re no longer the party of the people, or of the workers, and she can see that,” he said.

Berlin used to be a mill town, with strong unions representing workers. That era ended with the closure of its longest-operating paper mill in 2007, and the city has lost population as jobs disappeared. Now, the median household income in Berlin is $41,638, according to 2022 data from the US Census Bureau. In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney received 30.0 percent of the vote in Berlin. In 2020, Trump won 45.6 percent of Berlin’s vote.

Compare that with Bedford, a city in southern New Hampshire that has flourished economically. Its population grew 10 percent from 2010 to 2020, and the median household income was $151,850, according to 2022 data from the US Census Bureau.

Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said Bedford is ”very prosperous, full of very well-educated, high-income voters, who saw Trump at the head of the Republican Party and said, ‘No.’”

In 2020, Bedford went blue, with Biden securing 51.0 percent of the vote, while Trump received 47.8 percent.

Scala said he’ll be watching to see whether the state moves in an even more Democratic direction.

“That’s what I’m curious about,” he said. “Not whether Harris is going to carry the state.”